Last year, a milestone birthday was fast-approaching, and I dreamed of celebrating by doing something that excited me and would be fun for my guests. The thought of group travel crossed my mind and seemed to meet my criteria, but I was reluctant to ask my friends to spend a huge chunk of change on a trip. A nice, elegant dinner party seemed like a reliable option, but another meal, albeit delicious, didn’t quite seem to be special enough. As time went on, I admitted to myself: I wanted to perform, baby! ::shimmies in beaded fringe:: What better way to celebrate life than to put myself out there and live it out loud with the people dearest to me?!

Apart from a few performances, including a staged reading of a musical, I had all but stepped away from singing for the past couple of years, and in retrospect, there does not appear to have been any good reason.

The year was 2001. I was 11 years old. Alicia Keys’ “Fallin’” had hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and congruently, was being played on every radio station, a few times an hour, all summer long. I would sit in the passenger’s seat of my dad’s car, and boast how much my lung capacity had expanded since I started singing the bridge (where layers of Alicia’s voice cascade in harmony for 15 seconds) as though it were a sound made with one breath.